


Radius

by hannahrhen



Series: Here Comes Your Man [3]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Empathy, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Sexual Content, Soul Bond, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-12
Updated: 2013-11-12
Packaged: 2018-01-01 07:09:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1041888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hannahrhen/pseuds/hannahrhen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thor had said, "It's not a marriage," and Tony would prove that true enough. </p><p>(Soulmate AU)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Radius

After that, things returned to normal.

The new normal, yeah--the one where Loki lived in the Tower, haunting unoccupied floors and rooms where he wouldn’t be discovered, casting glamours on himself and drifting silently into corners when the others couldn’t be avoided.

Tony, on the other hand, had guests. Lots of them. Mostly those who wanted to see him after his near-escape from--”What was that, anyway? Any ideas?” “Stomach bug. Bad burrito. 'Exhaustion.'” (Pepper was the only one who looked at him like he was full of shit. Mm, no, that wasn’t quite it. Bruce and Rhodey knew he was full of shit, too, but weren’t in the habit of aggressively confronting him about it.)

Tony waited for Loki to cause trouble--to worm himself between Tony and his friends (and whatever Fury was, dickwad abusive pseudo-father-figure, maybe), but that didn’t materialize. He seemed content to slip through the halls, letting Tony go about his business each day without interference. 

Meanwhile, Tony avoided Loki as much as he could. Proximity was key to the settling of the _bond_ , a word Tony couldn’t think without rolling his eyes. He wasn’t going to be able to leave the fucking Tower without taking Loki with him, somehow, but they’d deal with that the first time SHIELD called on him. 

For now, it was like a staycation. 

Or, left to Thor’s representation, a honeymoon.

“It’s not a marriage,” Thor had reassured that first day. Though, as Tony found out later, that message hadn’t exactly been reassurance, or any sign that things weren’t going to be just about as bad as he had imagined when he discovered (finally been convinced) he was soulmates with the lesser, more murdery Asgardian prince. Because spiritual, emotional, _physical_ still meant--

“It is the custom,” Thor had explained, when he told Tony--after the goddamned ceremony--that consummation was part of the package. The cherry on the-- Oh, fuck, thinking of cherries in that context didn’t help. Neither had Thor’s look when Tony had suggested that maybe it could wait, you know, until they got to know each other a little better. 

Tony had a pretty good clue that Thor just wanted this thing to _take._ Had a visual of being handed a particularly troublesome daughter or prisoner or ... Yeah, well, whatever--Loki was his problem now, and as Thor had assured, “He won’t hurt you. He cannot.” Thor had rested one huge hand on Tony’s shoulder as Loki had fumed in the background, far enough away not to be able to hear every word, but probably getting the gist. “You, more than anyone, can trust Loki now.” 

And then the giant asshole had looked wistful. “Would that I could say the same.”

That had been about all Tony could take. “Want to take my place? Be my guest.” He had shrugged the hand off and gone straight to the bar. If he was going to do this, it was going to take a liberal lubrication of rotgut. He poured three-fourths of a bottle into his still-sensitive stomach before waving Loki toward the bedroom, and gesturing Thor to the balcony with a single, carefully chosen finger.

The rest? Best left unstudied. Tony had had some questionable fucks in his life--snapped out of a drunken blackout more than once to wonder, “Really?” in the middle of a sloppy thrust. Then gone back to dutifully screwing himself to orgasm, always, thankfully, with a condom on. 

(He’d be able to put those fucking things on in a coma, apparently. Someone could test that on him, given the number of comas and other debilitating states he’d fallen into. ... _Like this one,_ for example.)

But given that the last time Loki had rounded on him that quickly, he’d ended up with a bruised windpipe and--you know--falling through a goddamned window ... Yeah. Loki wasn’t hesitant as he collected Tony up and made things happen, and seeing that intensity focused on him again brought back some unbelievably bad memories. But his body knew what to do, enough, and even though most of his experience in that position had involved a strap-on and a lively pair of tits bouncing over his face, he sure as hell wasn’t going to let _his husband_ catch on. 

He could hide his shakes. Layer the reluctance under a lot of shitty patter. Disassociate with the best of them. His cock always worked, even if everything else failed. He came, hard, with Loki’s hand around his dick and some language he didn’t understand whispered into his ear.

He wasn’t planning on doing it again, if he didn’t have to. “Not a marriage”--he’d prove Thor’s words true, well enough. 

The crack-up later that night hadn’t been planned, either, and fuck-all if Tony was going to repeat that. He’d had enough of being vulnerable for this lifetime, of letting this evil piece of shit hurt him. So, it was wake, work, the friends he couldn’t avoid, busy-busy- _BUSY,_ and ... 

No matter what he did, though, the awareness settled in the back of his head, the constant mental touch of the crown prince of darkness. Loki, skulking through the Tower, reading the books he could find, asking little questions of JARVIS, and always staying in the perfect symmetrical radius of Tony. Never pulling far enough away to trigger the distress, never any closer than he had to be. They ate separately. Washed separately. Sent messages, only the very necessary ones, through JARVIS. Tony couldn’t tell, through the bond, what Loki exactly was doing--just got little pings of curiosity, bitter amusement, frustration, some variations on need (usually around the time JARVIS reported Loki was eating, and thank God, because that was the only kind of need Tony planned on letting him sate) ... 

What he didn’t get? Loki’s thoughts. Which was a relief, because if he couldn’t read Loki’s mind, Loki couldn’t read his. And that batshit alien whatever-the-fuck-he-was didn’t need any more crazy ladled on top of his own. Okay, yes, the unspecificity of the feelings was unsettling, at first, but eventually evened out, and if Tony got brief bursts of that harsh, gutting hurt, the same one that almost crushed him the first night ... 

Well. It would flare up and be tamped down quickly as Loki immediately sought some kind of distraction.

He read everything in the top three floors of the building. Talked to JARVIS more and more as the days passed. Was playing, through those efforts, at some kind of kindness, perhaps, and Thor’s words haunted Tony: Trust Loki. 

Yeah. Sure.

The thing was ... The thing was, at the end of each day, after the friends had gone or returned to their own floors. After Loki had pawed through the books and media he could find, or dropped his last glamour. After Tony had wrapped up the latest stage in a new project with a hum of approval from JARVIS ... 

Tony would climb the back stairs to the penthouse, slowly.

Make his way to the bedroom with his head down and breathing evenly through his nose. 

Bluster noisily through the door with an insult or an inadvisable suggestion or just a slam of his fist on the wall.

And walk without hesitation into Loki’s hold. Press himself into Loki’s chest. Smell him. Fucking _smell him._ And beat down his own feelings of despair, re-creating from memory conversations he’d had that day, schematics of his latest project. Tamping down his own pain, best he could.

Turned out--that “no-touchy” thing? Had caused more problems than it solved, and as long as Loki didn’t force more, Tony could bear lying in bed, shoulders together, and feel some tiny amount of peace--resentful, resigned peace--settle into his bones.

For now.

 _Only_ for now.

**Author's Note:**

> This was not the original part 3, which I [bitched about here](http://hannahrhen.tumblr.com/post/66611095797/writerly-whinge-about-my-in-progress-frostiron) and dealt with by writing Tony getting back to himself, a little bit. Hopefully horrors still to come.
> 
> Thank you for reading, and find me whinging and writhing about brother feels in Thor 2 on [tumblr](http://hannahrhen.tumblr.com).


End file.
